


Archery Lessons

by SidheRa



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Oral Sex, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2012-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 03:11:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SidheRa/pseuds/SidheRa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha needs help improving her aim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Archery Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks go to my friends over on tumblr for prompting me. Though I tried to get all of their ideas into this fic, I ended up attacked by the feels (again), and this is what resulted. Mea maxima culpa; I will try harder next time. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading!

The day started out ok, all things considered. She’d taken her morning jog early enough that she didn’t run into any other SHIELD agents on her way in or out of the building, which certainly enhanced her mood. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the other agents, she just didn’t have a strong opinion about any of them, and if she could avoid them, she did. Coulson had tried to tell her more than once that she should make an effort and try to socialize, but was it really her fault that the only other agent who wasn’t afraid of her was Barton?

She got back to base early enough that she even had the time to take a long, deliciously hot shower before stopping off for coffee in the mess on her way to her AM appointment with Coulson.

And then he’d had the nerve to tell her that Fury wanted her to qualify in all weapons areas before she would be cleared for more field duty. Thinking at first that he meant small arms (because what else would he mean?), she’d smirked.

She was halfway down to the practice range when she’d glanced down at the file and saw that Fury expected her to qualify in archery as well. There was something scrawled half-intelligibly in the notes that mission specs required that she show “adequate familiarity” with her partner’s weapon of choice.

Well, shit. If the hawk boy could do it, she was certain she could, too.

By the time Clint found her, she was covered in sweat and cussing under her breath as she nocked another arrow and loosed it toward the target. And missed.

Again.

“Hey, Nat!” Clint said too brightly. “Whatcha doing?”

She scowled at him as he crossed the room to her, placing the carrying case for his bow on the table.

“My name,” she loosed another arrow. “Is Natasha.”

He didn’t reply to her comment, just kept grinning as peered down range, taking in the sight of a dozen arrows at odd angles sticking into the target, none of them quite making the inner ten.

“Not bad for a beginner,” he said, obviously ignoring the twenty or so shafts that didn’t even make it all the way down the range. “Why aren’t you in the gun range anyway? This seems like an odd place for you.” He looked back at her as he unpacked his own equipment.

She narrowed her eyes at him, suddenly suspicious. “Did Coulson put you up to this?”

Clint actually looked baffled as he denied it. “Put me up to what? I just came down here for some target practice. I didn’t know you’d be here – didn’t think anyone would be here, honestly!”

She slammed her bow down on the table, then stalked down range to collect her practice arrows. Fucking archery.

Clint had his bow out and was already testing the draw when she got back to the safe zone, and he moved into the lane next to hers. With a grace she envied, Clint fired off three arrows in rapid succession, hitting the center each time.

Show off.

“You know, you could let me give you some pointers,” he said as he made another perfect shot. “I know a thing or two about archery.” He didn’t look at her as he spoke, focused on changing out a tip in case she wanted to pretend that she didn’t hear him.

Natasha bit back a sigh. Of course he would have to go and be all understanding and helpful. She wasn’t sure why she expected differently, he’d never done anything to make her assume otherwise. She’d been with SHIELD for over a year now, and in that time, she’d been shown time and again that these people were different. Though their ends were veritably indistinguishable from that of the Red Room, she had found that their means were very, very different.

Without even realizing it, she realized that she had been bracing herself for the reaction her old instructors had given when she was failed at something. She still bore the scars on her back from the first time she missed with a sniper rifle.

The worst of it was that she even knew that Clint would be good at it, teaching her to shoot this infernal contraption that he favored. She well remembered the weeks he’d spent by her side when she first defected, patiently teaching her to stop viewing every person she encountered as a threat, silently proving that some people just wanted her to be happy, and some people wanted to be her friend. It had taken a long time, but she believed him now, trusted him, and it bothered her how much she had wanted to impress him with her archery skills.

Unfortunately, she did need his expert help, even if it rankled, if she wanted to get back into the field any time soon, anyway. So she caved.

“Okay.”

He actually looked surprised when she agreed. “Really?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Yes. Really.”

“Well, okay. First thing, I guess, is that you need a glove.” He glanced around the table, searching for an extra, muttering under his breath as he looked in his case. When he didn’t find one, he stripped off his own, followed by his arm guard. “C’mere.” Without looking up, he motioned her over to him with a crook of his index finger, as if it didn’t even occur to him that she might refuse.

Surprising herself, Natasha set down her bow and stood beside him.

“Hold out your arms.”

He began babbling about something or the other as he strapped on the glove and guard, cinching and tightening the straps. She found herself unable to pay attention to his words as his fingers came into contact with her skin. The faint buzz of arousal that always accompanied his touch started to stir inside of her, but she bit it back through sheer force of will. She was the Black Widow, dammit, not some starry-eyed teenager.

It hadn’t been a problem at first, this strange attraction she was feeling. Quite the contrary, in fact. It had taken three months for her to really believe that he wasn’t going to kill her in her sleep, and only recently had she started to notice that he was rather attractive. It had taken her even longer to admit to herself what was happening; she’d been schooled in a dozen ways to seduce men and women alike, how to string them along until she got what she wanted, how to make certain that they were too focused on her to realize anything was amiss.

But she’d never been taught what it felt like to be on the other side, she’d never learned what it meant to be attracted to someone. She’d thought for the longest time that he simply annoyed her to the point of making her sick, attributing the twisting in her belly to mild nausea and the heat in his touch to skin irritation.

Then they’d been in Serbia looking into a weapons smuggling ring when he’d been shot, and even though it had turned out to be a minor flesh wound, she’d immediately realized as she saw him topple over that the hard feeling in her gut was not, in fact, annoyance, but a different kind of trouble entirely. Ever since that day, she’d had a hard time focusing around him, especially when he had his hands on her.

She might have imagined it, perhaps it was simply wishful thinking, but it seemed like he kept a hold of her arm for a few beats longer than necessary after he tightened down the last of the straps.

“Those feel okay? Are they tight enough?”

She flexed her hands and nodded, studiously ignoring how his proximity was setting her heart to race. “Yeah,” she replied, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. “I think so.”

Clint nodded curtly, then took a step back. “Can you show me how you’ve been shooting so far?”

She took a deep breath, banishing thoughts of the way his rough hands felt on her arms, then raised the bow. Natasha methodically went through all the steps she’d been taught long ago; she grabbed an arrow, nocked it, raised her arms, drew, aimed, and released.

Still off center, she noted with chagrin as she lowered her arms, a half-articulated curse on her lips. She turned to look at her partner, her irritation at herself creeping out in her voice. “What am I doing wrong, o sage archery master?”

Clint rolled his eyes at the title, but thankfully kept any judgment out of his voice as he replied. “You’re trying to shoot like me.”

She hadn’t expected that answer, and much of her frustration and anger deflated. “What?”

He drew his bow to demonstrate. “You’re trying to shoot like me,” he repeated. “See how I’m holding my bow right now? How I’m standing?” He turned his head to look at her, still keeping his bow drawn.

She nodded, and Clint adjusted his stance slightly. “Stance is very personal, and I’ve adjusted over time to what fits my body.” He turned his feet slightly more perpendicular to the target and shifted his center of gravity. “Your body is different though, so you need to draw more like this for now, and we can adjust your stance from there. Do you see?”

“Maybe,” she said. She thought she understood what he meant, so she drew, pretending to line up a shot down range. “Something more like this?”

She felt rather than saw Clint come to stand behind her.

“Close, but let’s try this.” He put his hands on her shoulders, pressing lightly as he ran his hand down her straightened arm. “First of all, relax. You’re too tense, and it’s throwing you off. And actually . . .” he trailed off, reaching for his own bow.

He took the practice bow she was using out of her hand, replacing it with his. “Why don’t you use mine instead.”

She stopped, not quite believing that he was letting her touch his bow much less fire it; she’d never seen anyone else come near it without incurring his wrath. She understood that reaction perfectly, of course. She was the same way with her guns.

“Are you sure?” She asked.

“Well, the draw weight is much greater than what you’ve got with that practice bow, but mine is also a lot more accurate. Besides, the point of this exercise is to make sure you can use my weapon in a pinch, right?”

“Yes.” He was already standing behind her again and she had to look over her shoulder to meet his gaze.

“Well, then there’s no point in working with anything else.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Just don’t mess up my bow, Agent.”

She couldn’t stop the smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth, so she turned away, focusing on the task at hand. “No promises.”

He laughed at that, and the sound tugged at her. In the pit of her stomach, the butterflies were back.

“Let me take a look at your grip. Go ahead and bring your left arm up,” he said, then he touched her hand where it gripped his bow. “Loosen up a little. Your thumb and your index finger are the only ones that should be actually gripping; the rest of your fingers are just there to keep the bow from falling.”

“Okay,” she managed to choke out, hoping that Clint couldn’t tell what his closeness was doing to her. He brought his left hand back to rest on her shoulder, and it felt like a firebrand through the thin fabric of her t-shirt.

“All right, that’s much better. Now, show me your draw,” he ordered, and she noticed that he was right; his bow was harder to draw, though not impossibly so. She was glad for the practice now, though, and grudgingly had to admit that Coulson and Fury were right. She wasn’t sure how she would have reacted if the first time she used his weapon was in the field. He tapped his right index finger where her first knuckle rested under her earlobe. “Is this always your anchor point?”

Natasha nodded, tried to stabilize her breathing. How was he remaining so calm?

“Okay, never change that; touch your knuckle there every time you draw. Go ahead and release, then redraw the string with the first joint of your fingers.”

She relaxed her draw without letting go of the string; she’d paid enough attention to Clint to know better than to dry fire a bow. She adjusted her hold like he’d suggested, then drew one more time.

“Like this?” She wondered if she always sounded so breathy when she talked?

“Exactly.” He brought his hands to her neck and a little shudder made its way down her back. There was no way he missed that, but he didn’t say anything about it, continuing with his lesson. He gently straightened her neck with his fingertips, adding, “Be careful not to tilt your head.”

His hands moved away then, and even if she could breathe a little easier without him touching her, she still mourned the loss of contact.

“Anything else I’m missing?” She said, holding her stance as motionlessly as possible.

He didn’t answer at first, and she could feel his gaze raking all over her body. At last, he spoke.

“Nope, let’s try it with an arrow now.” Maybe she was hearing things, but she could swear that his voice sounded rougher than usual.

When he handed her an arrow, his fingers brushed against her palm, and she shivered as she imagined him running those callused palms over the rest of her body.

“Nock and draw, but don’t release yet.”

Damn, even his voice was getting to her, wending its way inside of her and twisting up her insides. She took a deep, steadying breath before she went through the steps he’d outlined, ticking off each little pointer in her head as she nocked the arrow, raised her arms, and drew.

He’d moved closer to her after handing her the arrow, and she felt hot up and down the entire length of her back. She struggled with moderate success to put the hum of arousal aside and concentrate on archery.

Then he put his hands back on her again, and all her intentions flew out the window.

He put his fingers around hers where she held the arrow. “Don’t pinch the arrow; your hand is only there to pull the string and keep the arrow balanced.”

She relaxed her fingers, checked her stance. “Anything else?”

Clint moved his hands to rest on her waist. “Just relax, take your time with your aim.”

Easy for him to say. He didn’t have his partner pressed up against his back while trying to fire an unfamiliar weapon.

“Looking great, Tash.” His breath was hot in her ear when he said, “Now, release.”

She did, and for the first time all day, she hit the bullseye. Well, the edge of the bullseye, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

She pumped her fist and shouted with joy when she realized what she’d done, happy that there was hope for her yet. Without thinking, she whipped around to face Clint, a wide grin plastered on her face.

She’d forgotten just how close he was, but as soon as she completed her impromptu spin, she remembered. Acutely.

His eyes were smoldering as he looked down at her, and they were so close now that her chest brushed against his. The light pressure was teasing and far too arousing for comfort, but it was nice to see that he was breathing just as raggedly as she was.

He drew one hand up to caress her cheek, and with uncertainty thick in his voice, he whispered her name. She reached up to cup his face then, and she knew that they must look really stupid, standing there in the firing range, her still holding his bow, each of them with a hand on the other’s face as they stared unblinkingly at each other, but she just didn’t care.

Standing on her toes, she reached up for him and slipped her free arm around his neck. Then she tugged gently, drawing him toward her, and he bent down to her unresistingly, their mouths melding together.

She’s kissed him before, on various missions, and while those were certainly nice and made her feel warm on lonely nights, none of them compared to this, standing here at headquarters, embracing each other simply because they wanted to. She felt herself grow uncomfortably wet, desire pooling low in her belly, and she didn’t bother to stop the moan that worked its way up out of her, didn’t care if he heard it because she could feel him pressed insistently against her and she knew that he was just as aroused by their closeness as she was.

She broke their embrace to stow his bow safely on the table behind them, but then she leaned back in to kiss him again. He returned her fire with every bit of the same fervor that she gave, and for a long minute, she reveled in the way he tasted, the way he smelled, the way he felt.

“Fuck, Natasha,” he groaned, pulling away from her mouth and opening his eyes to look at her. “What have you done to me?”

She knew exactly how he felt, unsure how someone, anyone could get through the layers of defenses she’d erected around herself, unsure how she could possibly be this aroused, this hot for him when she’d never wanted anyone before, not really.

And it’s just like that, so abruptly, that she realized where she was and what she was doing and who with, and it’s too fucking real and when she fucked this up she was going to lose the only person in the entire fucking world that meant anything to her and she needed him to stick around, goddammit, so she stopped, took a step back.

“Clint, I . . . I don’t . . .” She stammered out.

“What’s wrong?” He looked bewildered, almost hurt, and his expression hit her right in the gut.

She paused, uncertain how to say it, but he needed to know. They’d talked about her past before in their own, awkward way, and she was pretty sure that he already knew that she wasn’t casual with this, not anymore. Still, it wouldn’t be fair to either of them if she didn’t say it, might give him the wrong impression, and she couldn’t live with that.

“Clint,” she started. “I’ve never . . . with anyone . . .”

He blinked, taken aback. “You’re a virgin?” He asked, disbelief clear in this voice.

Natasha laughed, a choked sound that cut through her hesitation. “No! No, not what I meant!” She didn’t like to think of it, but that hadn’t been the case since she was very young. “No, it’s just, I’ve never . . .”

She took a deep breath, tried again. “I’ve never wanted to . . .” She searched desperately for the right word. Sleep with someone? Fuck them? Make love? They all seemed wrong, somehow. Insufficient.

“You never what, Tash?” The way her name rippled off his lips twisted something deep inside of her, and he looked worried about her now, and fuck, that scared her.

“I’ve never wanted to be with anyone before.” It was imperfect, and kind of trite, but at least she got her point across.

“Never wanted . . .” She could see the exact moment that Clint put two and two together and realized what she meant. She saw the awareness wash over him, changing his expression, changing the way he looked at her. She pinpointed the exact moment that he started to pity her. She turned away from him, unable to accept that, unable to bear it. Not from him.  

“Never mind,” she whispered as she turned her back, embarrassed, and she started to shove her archery equipment into its case.

She felt his hand on her shoulder before he spoke. “Please wait, Natasha. Don’t push me away.” He dropped his hand when she didn’t say anything. “Will you look at me?”

She stopped packing up her equipment, leaned hard against the tabletop for a long moment before she turned to face him. “What? What is there to say? I won’t have your pity, Barton.” She held his gaze, judging his reaction, still stupidly holding out hope that he might surprise her.

His mouth slackened and the confused look disappeared from his face. “Is that what you think? That I pity you?”

“What else is there? You know what they did to me, you know they had me, started training me when I was a child. You know what they made me do.” The last part came out oddly, her voice losing its vehemence. She was so confused, didn’t even really understand why she was angry.

Clint hooked a finger under her chin, tipped her head back until she looked at him. “I could never pity you, Natasha.”

She recognized the look in his eyes then, and she was surprised that she hasn’t seen it there before. In between the easy affection she’d come to realize he’d always directed at her, there’s a hefty dose of lust, and a third thing, not quite the pity that she feared, but something less . . . repugnant. Sympathy, maybe. A kind of tenderness, tinged with sorrow. No, it wasn’t pity at all.

So when he turned those eyes on her lips and he leaned into her once more, she didn’t push him away.

The first brush of his lips across hers was shy, testing, and he pulled back slightly to gauge her reaction.

“Tash?” His voice was low and full of hope.

She licked her lips, lifted her hands to his shoulders, and with a deep breath, she pulled him back down to her.

This kiss was different, faster, harder, hotter, and she felt herself lose some of her control. She wrapped her arms a little tighter around his neck, and she thought she might fall if she weren’t hanging on to him. He slid his tongue into her mouth, tasting her thoroughly, and when his hands slid down to grip her sides, she moaned and pressed herself tightly against him.

She’d been here before, in this position. Countless times, with countless people, each of them making up a different part of the mosaic that was her past. Most of those people were cold and dead now, rotting below the earth in unmarked graves. It had never felt like this before though, had never felt like much of anything, really. She had always recognized that people, human beings derived pleasure from these acts, had readily used that against everyone stupid enough to cross her path, but she’d never reacted like this before, never felt light headed and restless when she kissed someone.

Clint walked her backward then, and she let out an undignified squeak into his mouth when she ran into the edge of the table. He chuckled at the noise and brought one hand up to caress her cheek as he continued to drink her in. She drew her knee upward then, running it along the length of his thigh until she could wrap her leg around his waist if she wanted to, and she could feel his hardness pressing at her insistently through their pants.

He moaned at the slight contact, then brought his hand down to her raised knee to hold her more securely against him as he ground against her.

“Tash . . .” he murmured against her lips. Slowly, methodically, he began pressing kisses all over her face, the corners of her lips, her chin, the smooth line of her jaw. Her head lolled back when he found her ear, then he moved on to her throat, and she could feel the jolt of arousal he’d caused reverberate through her body.

“Oh, Clint.” His name came out in a hiss, and she hardly recognized her own voice, dripping with desire as it was. “Please.”

“Please, what?” He asked, still pressing kisses against her throat, nibbling at the flesh he found there.

She couldn’t think straight, didn’t know what she wanted, just that she wanted him. So she told him, and he made a strangled sound at her words, his chuckle warring with a groan.

He peeled himself back from her, looking every bit as nervous as she felt. “Do you want to . . . can we take this elsewhere? Somewhere more private?”

She smiled at him. “Yeah.”

They gathered their equipment and were out the door of the gym in less than a minute, each heading off in a different direction when they left the room, promising to meet back in Natasha’s quarters in five.

She arrived first, and after she’d stowed her gear, there wasn’t anything to do but wait. There was nothing to clean, so she fidgeted with the way the pillow lay on her bed, ran her hands nervously through her tousled locks, then she walked over to the little sink in the corner of the room, splashed some water on her face in a vain effort to alleviate some of her nerves. When she looked up at her reflection in the mirror, she scarcely recognized herself. The features were the same, she even recognized the flush in her cheeks and the kiss-bruised swell of her lips. The expression in her eyes though, the way the light danced through them, that was foreign. It almost looked like . . . happiness?

After ten minutes had elapsed, she was starting to worry, wondering where Clint had gotten off to. He was just as efficient as she, just as able to get here quickly, but if he wasn’t on time then something must have happened. Maybe he was waylaid or changed his mind . . .

Then a familiar rap sounded at her door, and her worry was overtaken by that same, all too familiar giddy nervousness. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves.

“Hi,” she said succinctly when she opened the door.

“Hey.”

She stepped to one side, letting him in and closing the door behind him.

“So, um, hi.” He looked a little lost.

“You already said that,” she said, leaning back, resting against the door.

He approached her, braced one hand on the door next to her head. “Sorry I got held up. Ran into Coulson on the way up.”

Natasha smirked, then fiddled with the string on Clint’s sweatshirt. “You couldn’t have told him you were in a hurry?”

He laughed a little at that. “And said what, exactly? Sorry, boss, I told Natasha I’d meet her up in her room in five minutes so we could screw without an audience.”

“Oh, you’re here to screw me, then? You seem to be assuming quite a lot,” she said with mock indignation. Clint, unfortunately either didn’t notice that she was joking or he was just too nervous to read her correctly. Either way, he stopped playing with the lock of hair by her ear and a little hurt expression appeared on his face. When he started to back off, she reached up, grabbed him by the ears and pulled him down for a kiss.

Just like that, the hesitation was gone, and it was as if she hadn’t spent the last ten minutes wondering what the hell she was doing. Clint had his arms around her, holding her close, and that weird, pleasantly sick feeling was curling up in her stomach again and shit, she wanted nothing more than to get naked with this man.

He grabbed her ass without warning, squeezed her cheeks firmly in his hands, and then he lifted her up, letting the door take most of her weight. She wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, still kissing him and finding it increasingly hard to breathe.

“Shit, Barton,” she groaned as he nipped a particularly sensitive spot just below her ear.

He pressed into her and she could feel his hardness swell against her, “You’re so fucking hot, Tasha.”

She giggled at that, actually giggled, and tightened her grip around his waist to emphasize her mutual appreciation. “Ditto.”

He pulled away from the door, bringing her with him, and somehow he managed not to drop her on his way across the room. He tossed her lightly down onto her bed, and she was on her knees immediately, desperate to keep her hands on him.

She reached under the hem of his shirt, helping him strip it off, then she ran her hands over his chest, following the path of her hands with her mouth. When she came to the waistband of his pants, she paused, looked up at him.

“Is this okay?” She wasn’t used to stopping, wasn’t used to hesitating, but she didn’t want to mess this up.

He laughed, a snuffling sound, and said, “You hardly need to ask me that.” His voice was different than she’d ever heard it, gruff and full of lust, and she found that she really liked the way he sounded, especially coupled with the knowledge that she brought him to this point.

She made quick work of his pants, undoing the fly and sliding them down over the curve of his ass. He reached out one hand to her shoulder, balancing himself on her as he tried to step out of his pants, stumbling a little as he tripped over himself. He threw a self-deprecating shrug in her direction and slipped his sneakers off, tossing them away when he was done. Then, finally, he was in nothing but his underwear, and she could see him clearly through the thin fabric of his jockey shorts. Feeling a desperate need to touch him there, she leaned in to kiss his stomach, then dipped her tongue into his navel all the while running her hand firmly over his cloth covered cock. They repeated the same action as before, she pulling his underwear down and he balancing carefully while divesting himself of the offending material, and then he was free, practically leaping into her hand. She watched his legs start to quiver as she pumped him once, then again, and a small amount of pearlescent fluid appeared at the tip of his penis.

Clint hissed out his pleasure when she took him into her mouth, and she kept one arm wrapped tightly around his ass to hold him still while she sucked. She kept her free hand at the base of his cock, moving it up and down in time with the bobs of her head, and she could see his legs start to shake on either side of her face. When she swirled her tongue around the head, he’d obviously had enough because he touched a hand to the back of her head and took a step back.

“If you want me to last, you’d better stop that,” he said, sounding like he would like nothing better than to come in her mouth. She filed that fact away for later.

Clint sat down on the bed next to her then, and directed a positively wicked grin at her before he kissed her. He couldn’t keep his hands still, and they roamed all over her body, clutching and squeezing. Then he bent her backward until she was lying on the bed and he lay down beside her.

He slipped his hands under her shirt, kneaded the flesh there, then pulled the fabric and her sports bra both up in one smooth motion. She knew a lot of men were fascinated by her cleavage, but even though she hadn’t realized that Clint was one of those men before this moment, she definitely realized it as he took his time exploring her breasts now. Gently tormenting her right nipple with two fingers, he slipped his opposite arm under her back to hold her tight against him while he sucked the other stiffened peak into his mouth. The hand that had been worrying her nipple found its way down her body then, under the waistband of her pants, and further, inside her panties, and then . . .

Oh, God.

He found her clit almost immediately, one nail scraping over the sensitive bud and causing her to jerk violently against him, but then he chose to ignore it, opting instead to tease her, never quite giving her what she wanted. He bit down on her nipple without preamble, rolling it between his teeth, and then he slid his first two fingers into her as far as he could, until his palm rested against her. Unbelievably, she felt herself grow wetter, and she caught the end of his cocky, satisfied grin out of the corner of her eye.

“Fuck,” she cursed, long and drawn out, not even entirely sure what she wanted. If she were doing this to herself, it would be one thing, but having Clint with his mouth on her tits and his fingers inside of her, well, that was another game entirely. She’d never done this before, never let someone do this to her, always needing to remain in control in order to carry out her mission. But for some reason, she found herself letting go of that need, pushing it away in favor of the overwhelming trust she had in this man.

She had no more time to think when he picked up the pace of his fingers and ground his cock against her thigh, and she felt an orgasm building low in her belly. She started to cry out then, wordlessly moaning and half-shouting as he nipped and tweaked, sucked and squeezed. It was too much and not enough, and she felt herself approach the precipice, arching against his mouth and hand.

He added a third finger, pressed his thumb firmly against her clit, and then she was there, sailing over the edge as she convulsing around his fingers and bucked her hips, and she buried her face against his neck as she sobbed his name.

He drew his fingers out of her, held her close and waited while she came back down to reality, and when she shifted and opened her eyes, he was there, smiling with his eyes, a kind of awed expression on his face.

“You’re really beautiful when you come,” he said, and she felt herself heat up. When she tried to cover her face, he grabbed her hand, stopping her. “No, please don’t do that. Don’t hide yourself.”

He didn’t need to add, “from me”, but she heard it in his voice anyway, and the idea sounded really, really nice. She wasn’t sure where the shyness had originated from anyway; she had never been the wilting flower type, and it scared her how easily he brought out that reaction in her.

Rebelling against herself, she dropped her hand to seek out his erection where it was still rigid against her thigh, and he gasped, thrusting into her hand when she found him.

“Jesus, Tash.” His eyes fluttered shut and he rolled onto his back as she worked him, and the sight of him sprawled and helpless at her hands is so erotic that she was ready again, wanted him plunging into her and panting her name.

He looked up as she straddled his hips and rubbed his cock along the length of her slit, and relished the way he moaned. She reached down, between her legs, tried to position him at her opening, but he halted her motions with a strong grip on her hips.

“Are you . . .?” He started to ask, already too far gone to get all the words out.

“I’m clean.” They’d taken their mandated yearly SHIELD physicals two weeks ago.

He nodded, “Yeah, me too, but, uh . . .”

Oh, right. She’d never told him, not that. It had always been irrelevant until now.

“You can’t get me pregnant.” She didn’t add the why, didn’t tell him about the hormone treatments and the painful surgeries that marked her childhood, the ones that gave her an increased ability to heal and enhanced resistance to all forms of poison and disease, but left her unable to conceive. It had always been an asset in her line of work, but now it was just another bit of baggage. For once though, that baggage was working out in her favor.

Accepting her answer, he shifted his grip on her thighs, now helping her sink down onto him, and then he was fully inside her, nestled deep and twitching, and she felt like she could come again just from this, just from feeling him stretch her open. Then she started to move her hips, circling and grinding them down over his pelvis, and the lovely sensation increased tenfold, a burning ache that spread throughout her lower body before it travelled upward.

He reached up, his fingers ghosting over her belly, then up between her breasts and higher still. He sat up off the bed, wrapped his arm around her neck, then pulled her close so he could kiss her while they rocked for what seemed like hours, but maybe it was just minutes, swallowing each other’s breath and moving in tandem. The world slowed down to just the two of them, this room, this bed. She hovered over him, opening her eyes and pulling his head back when she neared her release, needing to watch him while he came.

He grimaced at her, a new expression that was close, but not the same as the one made when he was injured, and she understood completely. It hurt her, too, the nearness, the unexpected intimacy she felt at this moment as they neared ecstasy together, and she didn’t know how to react, didn’t want to think about what it might mean. Clint kept his eyes firmly locked on hers as he somehow managed to meet her thrusts, and she bent to kiss him when they both lost it, slumping backward down onto the mattress.

Eventually, she looked over at him, and when her heart clenched at the sight of Clint, sex ravaged and tousled in her bed, she forced that feeling down, shoved it back to where it belonged with the blocks and dolls of her earliest childhood. She could only deal with so much in one day.

Luckily, he seemed to be on the same page, because instead of anything saccharine or overly sentimental, he just asked, “So, target practice again tomorrow?”

Her laughter resounded off the walls.


End file.
